Evaluation of the thickness in nanolayers using the transfer matrix method for modeling the spectral reflectivity

Abstract

The reflectivity spectra have been traditionally used to determine the thicknesses in semiconductor films. However, thicknesses of nanofilms are not easy to evaluate because the interference fringes are not visible in the transparent region. In this paper, we present a computed method based on the transfer matrix (TM) which is used to match the calculated and experimental room temperature reflectivity spectra of the ZnTe/GaAs films and to determine its thickness film values afterwards. The TM method needs only to know refraction indices and absorption coefficients as a function of wavelength for the film and the substrate. The thickness nanofilms evaluated by our method are in agreement with the values measured by ellipsometry, Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy techniques. The present procedure extends the application of the standard spectral reflectance technique to determine semiconductor nanolayer thicknesses.